Phantom - Chapter 7: Escalation

Rissa had been more than the lure; she’d been the guarantee. I would have never gotten into the car without her.

I was sure that somewhere, halfway across the galaxy, Warmaster Meterio was laughing at the trouble he’d caused. Maybe it was his revenge for reneging on my death. Whatever his motive, he’d guaranteed my time on Terra would be as short, sharp, and deadly as an adamantine blade.

Her hand was a blur as it connected with my face. “How dare you? How dare you bring me back to this hell?” Another slap landed, and another. She trembled as the pain in her hand failed to stifle the agony in her heart.Paric Kilhaven meets a friend he was forced to leave behind and realizes another war is about to begin.

The inquisitor shifted in his chair. “You marked a Warp daemon?”“A daemonhost in the throes of its ascension.”“Sarkyss was being born as you entered its lair?”“The Imperial Guard’s new offensive must have met the beast’s quota for blood, making me the midwife.”“The Inquisitorial augur scans had shown that to be the case. Inquisitor Agrimunt mentioned it when she was here.”“Nobody mentioned it to me, but my path had already been decided.”“By whom?”“A rogue primaris named Lucien Cano,” I picked a name out of thin air—one of many that drove me through that war. I’d been desperate to prove that I wasn’t him and still wasn’t sure I’d succeeded.“Paric, the chain of command really doesn’t concern you, does it?”“Not anymore.”

Lizzy Allebrand: a goddess at six. Nothing dangerous about that.A cosmic anamoly, a child, leaves her mark on Paric Kilhaven.

To a psyker lord, everything is about control.

A widely used explosive in the munitions of the Imperial Guard, fyceline leveraged a three-stage chemical reaction to mete out its dependable devastation, emitting three different wavelengths of light in a short-lived chemical reaction. Crates of grenades, tank munitions, or artillery rounds were tagged with a green, yellow, and white stripe to warn those lacking the ability to read. That those colors existed within the bounds of a densely packed hive city was a disaster waiting to happen.Paric knows an attack is imminent and a gala for Hive Medicae dignitaries is at the top of his list of potential targets.

“I’m here to investigate a murder. There were four victims, but the number could have easily been six.”Paric returns to the scene of the previous night's crime to find out who was the real target and why.

“Warmaster Meterio bestowed the highest honor—post-mortem—giving you the title Psyker Lord of Ordo Supernovae. Like a star, you died and did so with great effect.”“It was my first war. I was the greenest funnel Primaris Rovira had, and she assigned me to the loyalists’ most precarious position. Nobody expected me to vanquish the first daemonhost of Sarkyss, let alone the last.”“By doing so, you forced the players to start a new game, one that was supposed to end with your demise.”

And the dead mark of a Warp daemon. Five had become Six in the blink of an eye.Paric's resurrection continues at the hands of House Kilhaven and a visit to Schola Psykana.